Pirates of the Joora
Yesterday I had some sort of a hot argument with a co-worker about illegal copying, and piracy, and so. It seems that he didn’t consider illegal use and illegal copying of software stealing. And using my powers of argument, I convinced that he belongs to jail. (We all do)
Basically, in this part of the world, piracy is part of our daily lives. We listen to pirated music on a CD while going to work, use pirated software at work, then send and receive pirated software between our mobiles, and at the end of the day, we watch the latest movie that just hit the theaters in USA in DVD at our friend’s house. It is part of our daily lives I think.
In the last Jordan Planet meeting we shared our sources of pirated dvds to each other, some like to get it from the tunnel at Jordan University, others prefer Downtown, Waibdeh, or the Joora (The Hole). The Joora could be considered one of the major sources of CDs, mobile phones, DVDs, and so. Everything could be found there. Last time my uncle comes for a visit from USA, he spend a considerable amount of time at the Joora shopping for Arabic CDs, and latest movies that didn’t hit the shelves yet in USA. be basically walked out of the Joora with at least 1,000 USD worth of dvds and cds, bought at less than 20$.
Now do I condemn this, should I shout loudly against it, and incriminate all those who buy them ??! well I am not sure to be frank. Yesterday I bought a mobile I wanted to get for a loong time. And the first thing I did after getting it is looking for Warez for it.. I think that I am a criminal too.
Well, I’m not sure how you are comparing between Nokia and MS, at least because I’m not sure if Nokia dominates world cell phones market as MS dominate OS market.
About warez, I’m totally against it, I have even switched to linux as the primary and the only OS on my desktop for two reasons
1-) to stop pirating software
2-) to stop supporting Monopolies
However I still visit tux warez from time to time, specially for gaming.
Despite the fact that our society is increasingly using pirated software but I feel its like they have to, and or its the only available option for their budgets specially when we are not in software vendor goals to achieve as legitimate customers with such prices for their software.
one last thing how about getting simputer?
Isam you are being very hard on yourself… i mean, Natasha once wrote about how cheap things here are compared to Amman… you buy a dress 20 dollars, it would not cost you less than 300 Dinars in Amman ( i swear i am not lying)… so pirating becomes a necessity! i mean since people are exposed to this very strong stream of products, but they can not buy it not because they can not afford it, but because sellers in Amman are exploiters and very cheapt items become too damn expensive. people barely make it till the end of the month, so if they find some thing that gives them pleasure then i am not sure that this whole pirating is not a necessity in our side of the world!
OPmar bin il khatab once said, i dont remember the exact words, but basically he said that he does not blame a hungry man to open his sword for a piece of bread… I belive it is the same concept. Either stop this stream of brain washing or make things affordable… and people will become honest!
I used to work for a software company in the US and noticed that they didn’t mind if students and others pirated their software. The logic was that when those students go to work in a company, they will ask for the software they like to use, and companies are really the major source of income for software makers. I think that Microsoft for example, likes the fact that people are addicted to Windows, because they make enough money off companies who purchase the software for their employees (who ask to Windows). On the other hand, imagine there is a startup Jordanian software maker that makes great software. If no one pays for the goods, they will go out of business. Piracy is convenient, but also an obstacle to development.
– Nathir